Poetry

I am as you see what most becomes me: miles skipped canceled trips masters yet unmet. Lace alone is loyal, sacred, royal, in control of crimes stopped by patterns of blood bred to best behavior. As you see I am what has become of me.

My eyes must be open because light through the woof of the hut’s weave shows my arm in pin shivers. What wakes me?     A howl unfolds outside, fear-in-the-mouth, a breathing trill, certifying the silence after. Sheep in a barn as flimsy as mine drum panic that my bones pick up, an arthritis of fear….

The perfect ease of grain time enough to spill the flavor of a woman carried through the rain. Honey-talk tongues down home dreams a rushed but shapely prayer. Evening lips part to hush questions raised at dawn. The melon yields another slice. Fingers understand. Ecstasy becomes us all. Red cherries become jam. Deep juvenile sleep…

He returns her valentines with the misspellings underlined. Her life story read like a subpoena. Her pen leaks in his pocket. He wears the shirt for years. His life reads like an instruction manual. He wears red socks to her mother’s funeral. Her life story reads like a purchase order. She memorizes the work of…

    It’s been suggested: well kept lawns and fences, white porch swings and toast by the fire.     It’s been requested: puppies, a window of blossoming pear trees and a place for robins to nest. But I know that somewhere, out there the town is lit. The players begin to make music in all the…

Gyn’s packaged in pastel. I’m in the pink suite of X-Ray wrapped in baby blue (opens-in-the-front) behind a pink- flowered curtain, waiting for the pink- and-white-clad tech. The dressing room’s a cell smaller than solitary, papered pink. In the waiting room a fretful pink- with-fever baby settles at the breast of her mama. I reminisce:…

It was one of those things you just have to believe to see. Let’s call him, Kenneth— yes, Kenneth Oboto— sitting statue still, no, say: still as machete death— in a silk, leopard-skin tutu blouse and skullcap, Parade Magazine in hand— on a green-slatted Iowa City park bench, day-one, freshman orientation— like a beautiful, black-eyed…

Thief of the corn, patch of night against a perfect sky, I see you there watching me with your strange eyes.     What message do you bring me? When the leaves fall you’ll be all we have left. Perched above the cemetery walk, you add your two cents’ worth     when he reads the part…

translated by Jonathan Galassi Desire for your bright hands in the half-shadow of the flame: they smelled of oak and roses; and death. Ancient winter. The birds out foraging seed were suddenly snow; like our words. A little sun, an angel’s halo, then mist: and the trees, and us made of air in the morning.